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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Another Bennett DNA Match!

It seems my Bennett line is screaming for attention. Last week, I wrote about an exciting new DNA match with a descendant of Jones Bennett of Troup County, Georgia. Since my 3rd great-grandfather, Lewis Bennett, also lived in Troup County, the possibility of a relationship has always existed, just waiting for someone to prove it.

This week, I received an e-mail from another DNA match with a different Bennett connection. This new match is a descendant of Micajah Bennett of Laurens and Newberry Counties, South Carolina. Some researchers have speculated that Lewis and Jones connect to Micajah but speculation is as far as it has gone. Micajah was in South Carolina and Lewis and Jones were both born there (somewhere) - Lewis about 1804 and Jones about 1818. Micajah died before 1800 so he was not the father of either of them. He did have a son named Lewis who was older than my Lewis.

It is not immediately possible to determine if these two people also match each other but their matches to me are not on the same segment. The Micajah Bennett match is to my test with FamilyTree DNA. The Jones Bennett match is to my test with 23&Me. (Yes, I was so frustrated and confused by my first autosomal DNA test that I decided to do a second one with a different company a few months later.) The initial results for both of these tests have been in for well over a year but new matches appear as more people are tested. These are by far the most interesting ones I have seen. (Not that I've worked my way through that many of them yet. I have hundreds of matches. It's a never ending process but that is another story.)

The only clues to South Carolina locations I have for Lewis' family are Edgefield District (where his son, John, claimed he was born in 1831) and Bennettsville in Marlboro County (where some say his son, David, was born in 1828). Nothing in Laurens or Newberry but Edgefield District did border Laurens at that time.

FTDNA has a feature that allows you to see common matches between you and another person. The Micajah Bennett match and I have 14 other people in common. The chart at left shows how three of them compare to the two of us. Several of those people have the Bennett surname listed in their profiles. They will get the first round of e-mails.

Maybe all this autosomal DNA testing is finally starting to pay off. Too bad it can't do the research. There is a massive amount of work to do here.

If you have a connection to Lewis, Jones or Micajah Bennett, please e-mail me. Please.